A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked a California law, drafted in response to President Trump’s immigration crackdown, that required federal agents to wear visible identification showing their name or badge number.
In a unanimous ruling, three judges on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the California law, known as the No Vigilantes Act, was likely to be a violation of the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution that bars states from regulating the federal government.
“The No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions, and Congress has not authorized such regulation,” the ruling said.
The ruling was signed by two judges appointed by Mr. Trump, Mark J. Bennett and Daniel P. Collins, as well as one judge appointed by President Barack Obama, Jacqueline H. Nguyen.
The decision was a second judicial blow this year to California Democrats in their attempt to control how the Trump administration enforces immigration laws in the state.
Last year, after masked, unidentifiable agents began detaining people in predominantly immigrant neighborhoods, residents complained that they could not differentiate law enforcement officers from potential criminals. California lawmakers passed two bills meant to help identify officers and hold them accountable. One law prohibited officers from wearing face coverings and the other required that they wear identification.
The Trump administration sued California over both laws, arguing that the state did not have the authority to regulate federal agents. The state responded that it could enact requirements for federal officers operating in the state if the same rules applied to state or local officers.
A district court judge blocked the mask ban because it applied to local and federal officers, but not those working for the state. But the judge upheld the visible identification requirement because it applied to all officers operating in California.
The federal government appealed the ruling on the identification law, which was overturned by the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday.
“Today’s decision is a huge WIN for protecting the safety of our Nation’s law enforcement officers and ensuring @POTUS’s promise to enforce our Nation’s immigration laws,” Stanley Woodward Jr., an associate attorney general, wrote on social media.
Sasha Renée Pérez, the Democratic state senator who wrote the bill that required visible identification, said she was disappointed by the ruling.
“As the Trump administration, again, ramps up immigration enforcement in California, this is an especially dangerous time to have unidentifiable people who are purportedly federal agents with limited training violently swarming our communities with concealed identities,” Ms. Pérez said in a statement.
Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokeswoman for Gov. Gavin Newsom, criticized “the federal government’s campaign of terror and weaponized incompetence.”
“Their tactics continue to harm our families every day,” she said.
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